Within these studies we can identify a second proposition—the extension of
controlsinto new territories. Not only are new controls being added to old ones, old
forms of control are being applied to new territories. The classic example is the
scripting of service interactions, originally popularized by Ritzer ( 1993 ), but linked
to the development of a variety of feelings’ rules for the mobilization of emotional
labor by writers working within a labor process tradition such as Bolton ( 2004 ).
LPT sees knowledge management as, in part, an extension of controls into what
were hitherto areas of limited regulation. Companies employing expert labor are
under increased competitive pressure to speed up the product development cycle,
prompting management to try to identify, monitor, and standardize the tacit
knowledge of such workers (McKinlay 2005 ).
We would also identify an emergentWnal proposition. As has been noted, LPT
has long pointed to the existence of combinations of controls, but a clear trend
seems to be evident—towards theincreased hybridityof control structures as
environments and organizational structures become more complex (Alvesson
and Thompson 2005 ). In call centers that trend is towards integrated systems of
technical, bureaucratic, and normative controls (Callaghan and Thompson 2001 ).
The signiWcance of such developments is highlighted by Houlihan ( 2002 ), who
shows that whilst work and markets vary in the industry, there is a characteristic
high-commitment, low-discretion model of call center work and management.
LPT needs to specify the drivers in a more credible way, but hybridity of this
kind—where conventional soft HRM practices coexist alongside neo-Taylorist
work organization—poses a signiWcant challenge to HRM. Whether with respect
to call centers (Batt and Moynihan 2002 ) or more generally (Watson 2004 ), HRM
writers tend to rely on contrasting ideal types of high-commitment and low-
commitment HRM strategies, In other words, even where HRM writers argue for
the existence of contingent strategies, they are conceived as coherent packages—
highorlow trust, highorlow skill and so on. This is notastable hybrid. Capital still
has to manage the tensions and trade-oVs, resulting in shifting and precarious sets
of choices and adjustments across diVerent sectors, but this is a long way from
controlorcommitment.
- 2 Work Organization
Claims of a move to non-Taylorist or humanistic work organization are hardly new
(Harley 2005 ). Nevertheless, HRM literatures make a number of claims about these
approaches to work organization. First, it is argued that they are increasingly
common. Second, organizations that employ such approaches to work organiza-
tion, particularly in a systematic and strategic fashion, can foster high levels of
satisfaction, commitment, and mutual gains among their employees (Guest 2002 ).
Finally, largely as a result of their impact on employees, these approaches to work
154 paul thompson and bill harley